MARY AND O'NEIL by Justin Cronin Read Free Book Online Page A

at O’Neil’s dormitory, hoping to surprise him with a bag of muffins filched from the hotel breakfast buffet, but no one answers the door when they knock. A moment of confusion: Didn’t they arrange to meet him here? Then, as they’re leaving, they run into his roommate, Stephen, on his way back from the shower. They have known him for years; O’Neil and Stephen went to high school together, and though the college did not let them share a room freshman year, now they are together again. Stephen, who is tall and fair with a long nose and a hairline that’s already receding, is wearing a terry-cloth bathrobe and carrying a plastic basket of toiletries under his arm. Behind one ear is a dab of shaving cream. He seems startled to see them, but after an awkward moment he hugs Miriam and shakes Arthur’s hand.
    “He left, like, an hour ago,” Stephen explains. The door across from Stephen and O’Neil’s room opens, washing the hallway with the smell of cigarettes and the sound of Steely Dan. Miriam recognizes the record—it is one that O’Neil played all through high school. A young woman Miriam doesn’t know steps from the room in a silk dressing gown, says hello to Stephen, and heads down the hall to the showers, humming the song as she goes. Miriam tries not to look but does; her hair is a thick, glistening black, like a curtain of velvet, and the way she walks, her bare feet silently striking the hallway’s green carpet, suggests that, beneath the gown, she isn’t wearing anything at all. The smoke from her cigarette follows her like a laugh.
    “I wasn’t even awake yet, really, but I heard the door,” Stephen says, yawning. Miriam wonders if Stephen is lying, to cover for O’Neil—did he even spend the night there?—but decides not to say anything about this. “You can probably catch him over by the grandstands. I think he thought you were meeting him there.”
    They leave the muffins with Stephen, who is biting into one even as he’s saying good-bye, and head back out into the bright day. By the grandstands, a five-minute walk away, they find O’Neil in his sweats, milling around with the other members of the cross-country team. A few students and parents are already sitting in the aluminum bleachers, chatting and hugging themselves in the cold. O’Neil explains the course: five miles down trails through the woods that abut the playing fields, then up the hill into the middle of town, and back to the starting line. He hasn’t shaved, and his hair, despite its length, seems disheveled, as if he had only awakened moments ago. On the other side of the field a fancy motorcoach is parked, and Miriam can see the other team stretching out in their shimmering violet sweatsuits. The race is thirty minutes away.
    “God, why did you let me eat all that?” O’Neil is on the grass, sitting Indian style, though the bottoms of his running shoes are somehow together. He bends forward at the waist, his forehead dropping to his knees in a single liquid motion. “Never mind. My fault, right? The chocolate pie was definitely a mistake, though. I was up moaning half the night.”
    “Is Sandra going to be here?” Arthur asks.
    “You know, I thought she would be, by now.” He rises nimbly and does half a dozen quick hops on his toes. Miriam can practically feel the energy coiled in him, a spring about to release, chocolate pie or no. O’Neil scans the scene, looking for Sandra, and shrugs when he fails to find her. “I’m sure she’ll show up. I told her you were coming, and if that doesn’t get her here, nothing will.”
    “I’m beginning to think you invented her,” Miriam says.
    “Trust me, Mom.” O’Neil smiles confidently. “I couldn’t have made her up if I tried.” Still standing, he spreads his legs wide, pivots on the balls of his feet, and drops one knee to the grass. “God, I feel just awful. At least it’s cold,” he says. “I’m better when it’s cold.”
    O’Neil introduces them